A Hopeful Heart and A Home, a Heart, A Husband: A Hopeful Heart. Lois Richer

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СКАЧАТЬ take the heat.” Her face flooded with pink. She rushed to correct herself.

      “Of the pool. I mean, the Jacuzzi. After a few minutes, the heat really gets to me.”

      Mitch knew what she meant. The heat was getting to him, too. He could feel it frying his brain to mush as he admired the lovely Melanie.

      He’d seen far skimpier suits on many of the local beaches, but nothing that looked as elegantly attractive as this. Mitch decided he much preferred it over the pink uniform she had worn the other day. Her long auburn hair was curling wildly around her shoulders and face, hugging the wide cheekbones and delicately arched brows.

      Flushing brightly, Melanie turned her back to him to gather her belongings. As she did, her towel slipped to the floor.

      What was wrong with the men in town, he wondered, watching her. The woman was gorgeous, and apparently had brains, too. Yet here she was, spending her evening alone. Idly, he wondered if there was someone special in her life.

      Mitch watched her pull on a white terry covering that just grazed her thighs. When the heat began to addle his brain, he moved out of the swirling hot tub to tug on the baggy jogging pants he had tucked into his sports bag. Something was definitely going on between them, he decided, some spark of interest he’d noticed from the first. And despite his best intentions, he was going to investigate the fiery redhead.

      “How about going to dinner with me?” The phrasing wasn’t the greatest, he decided, but it was hard to make sense when your brain was the consistency of mashed potatoes.

      She was slipping on shorts, and at his question, Melanie stood stock-still, perched like a startled flamingo on one leg. Her tousled hair tumbled around her face, huge green eyes questioning. She had a fresh, clean-scrubbed look he found very attractive.

      “I don’t—”

      He cut her off before she could refuse.

      “Please,” he cajoled, tugging on a shirt. “You would really be doing me a favor.” He tried to look forlorn and alone. “I just moved the last of my stuff in and I can’t possibly do any more hard work today. I deserve a break. Please?”

      She looked at him steadily, obviously gauging just how reliable he was. He was surprised himself at how anxious he was to get to know her better.

      “All right,” Melanie agreed finally. “But I think you’d better come with me. I agreed to have dinner with my mother tonight.” If she thought she would turn him off by introducing her mother, she had been dead wrong.

      “Is she a good cook?” Mitch asked warily, watching her gather her belongings.

      “The best. You may need to do a few more laps when you’re finished.”

      He looked affronted as he pulled on his clothes. One hand patted his washboard-flat stomach experimentally.

      “I could stand to gain a few pounds. You think?” He cocked his head with that little-boy grace she was coming to recognize.

      “No comment.” Melanie giggled and went out. “I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour. Don’t be late.”

      He wasn’t late, but she was there before him, tapping one foot impatiently against the marble floor.

      “I wondered if you’d changed your mind,” she murmured, tossing her hair over her shoulders. Melanie stepped through the door and began to stride down the street. Mitch was forced to hurry to keep up with her.

      “A woman who’s on time,” he muttered, huffing as he marched beside her. “Who would believe it?”

      “Quite a few people, actually. It’s just one of my failings.”

      “Why are we running when we could have taken the car?” Mitch panted, half-walking, half-jogging across the street.

      “We’re not running, we’re walking. My mother lives only three blocks away. There’s hardly any point in driving. Besides—” she grinned at him pointedly “—it’s good exercise.”

      “I prefer swimming.” He breathed, trying to look macho while his lungs burned. To his disgust, Melanie seemed totally unaffected by the speed race.

      “Most out-of-shape people do prefer exercise that isn’t weight bearing,” she murmured without losing a step.

      “Now just a minute! I am not—” Mitch felt himself collide with the pavement at the same moment his temperature hit boiling. There was a web of stabbing pain radiating from his left knee, and his pants were torn.

      “Now look what you’ve done,” he said furiously as he stood with some difficulty, pushing her helping hand away. “I’m not going out for dinner looking like this.”

      Her green eyes flashed with something he might have thought was sympathy. Except for her next words.

      “Mm, lack of coordination, too. Don’t ever take up jogging, Mr. Stewart. You’re not the type.”

      “I don’t think we have to worry about that,” he said through clenched teeth as he brushed bits of gravel from his palms. “And I am not uncoordinated! If you didn’t insist on making this the Indy 500…”

      “Oh, now it’s my fault! If that isn’t just like a man! Blame it on me because I keep in shape and you don’t. As if I or anyone else could make you exercise more. Men!” She spat the word with a telling glance that relegated him to one of the lower subspecies in the universe.

      Mitch smiled grimly.

      “I’m sorry,” he muttered, limping at a pace that was still far too fast but considerably slower than her former fifty knots. “But I am a man. I wouldn’t have come with you if I had known you hated men.”

      “I don’t hate men,” she said in exasperation. “I quite appreciate them.” Her eyes flickered and he wondered if he could call that stretch of her lips a smile. “Some of you are even quite useful.”

      It was a put-down, sure as anything, and Mitch refused to let it pass.

      “I think I understand why you’re not, er, out tonight,” he murmured under his breath. “You’re a man-hater.”

      She stopped so quickly he crashed into her, the breath wheezing out of his chest at the contact. Melanie Stewart was mad. He could see it in her glinting green eyes. He could feel it in the tingle of electricity that pulsed through the air around them. But what really gave away her emotional state were the small, pointed fingernails buried in his arm.

      “I am not stupid,” she enunciated. “You think that if you make all these ridiculous accusations, I’ll forget you’re trying to swindle me out of that money, don’t you? Well, Mr. Mitchel Stewart, or whatever your name is—” she snorted in pretended amusement “—it’s not going to work.”

      Carefully, with extreme patience and not a little wincing, Mitch removed her talons from his shirtsleeve.

      “I don’t know why you keep saying that,” he muttered fiercely. “My name is Mitchel Stewart. And I am not trying to swindle anyone out of anything.” He peered at her, noting with interest the high spots of color on her cheeks. СКАЧАТЬ